Given the continuing confusion within the climate policy community, the media, and even among governments themselves, there is an urgent need to set the record straight on the actual results of the Copenhagen summit, to reinforce the reasons why a UN climate process is so critical, and to point to some possible ways forward to a successful conclusion at Cancun in December 2010.

Contrary to news reports of a victorious American initiative, much of the world does not view President Obama’s forging the Copenhagen Accord as the “rescue of a collapsing UN process” but rather as a move jeopardizing two years of good faith negotiations. In fact, many multilateralists view it as defying the UN¹s established principles of equity in a way that shifts new obligations onto developing countries at a time when the U.S. has yet to deliver on its own legal commitments assumed almost two decades ago.

Copenhagen saw China blamed for lack of “transparency: and poor countries for “blackmailing” industrialized nations. This trend has serious implications for the prospects of creating effective constituencies in the US for global climate justice, a precondition to getting a truly effective domestic as well as global deal for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

Panelists include:

• Martin Khor, Director of the South Centre, a think tank for developing countries
• Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, Chair of the UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issue
• Maude Barlow, Senior Advisor on Water to the President of the UN¹s General Assembly
• Gopal Dayaneni, Movement Generation, delegate with US grassroots leaders from urban, racial, economic and environmental justice groups to Copenhagen
• Victor Menotti, Executive Director, International Forum on Globalization

This event is cosponsored by the International Forum on Globalization, the Institute for Policy Studies, Action Aid USA, Oil Change International, and Friends of the Earth. For more information, visit www.ifg.org